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Roguelikes are among the toughest games you can play, challenging your ability to react quickly, strategize cleverly, and stay calm under pressure, as one wrong move can see you unceremoniously thrown back to the start screen. It's brutal, but having all of your hard-fought victories undone is all part of the charm of these games. Unless, of course, after pouring hundreds of hours into the same one, you've only avoided this outcome a handful of times - then it's just brutal.
That's the situation one unfortunate roguelike fan found themselves in with one of the genre's best, Slay the Spire. Recounting their tale over on the game's subreddit page, the player, who goes by jovialdeathtrap, explains that having never done so before, they decided to check their stats for the game, and to their horror, they discovered that in the 303 hours 56 minutes and 22 seconds they've spent playing they've only managed to beat it seven times.
"I've never looked at my stats before and I am APPALLED," jovialdeathtrap says. "Am I the worst STS player ever? This is brutal." The screenshot of their stats shows that they've been bested by the spire no less than 637 times. To their credit, they have managed to take down 509 bosses and 14,198 regular enemies while ascending 15,743 of its punishing procedurally generated floors.
I've never looked at my stats before and I am APPALLED from r/slaythespire
What's more, a look down the comments suggests this sort of win/loss ratio isn't all that unusual. "Mine are very similar, except I only have 2 wins," admits PaperGeno. "This game is so hard," user apinchofbox writes, "Finally! Some stats that look like my own!"
Of course, as plenty of others point out, getting to the finish line isn't everything, and win or lose, having a good time is what really matters. "Bro wins over the Spire by having fun," says P-ketchu. The sentiment is even echoed by jovialdeathtrap themselves later in the comments. "It's the journey, not the destination!" they write, suggesting they're not planning to stop tackling that spire anytime soon.
For plenty more brilliant and brutal challenges, check out our pick of the best roguelikes.
